#93: How To Handle Contrary Evidence (I)

April 2, 2011

What do we do when evidence indicates that a theory or an hypothesis we hold is false?

The simplistic answer is that we dismiss the theory or the hypothesis, but this is not what actually happens and often for good reasons. What we do under such circumstances is important to do consciously, aware of the various considerations at play. The issue of what to do has arisen historically many times.

Probably the most famous such case is that of the so-called “Problem of Evil.” Revealed Christianity holds that God is infinitely knowing, good, and powerful. Yet, on the face of it, it would seem that since evil definitely seems to exist, that God must be either not knowing, not good, or not powerful: either he doesn’t know that evil exists or he doesn’t mind evil existing or he just can’t do anything about it. In this example, evil would seem to be the contrary evidence to the hypothesis that there is an all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful God. Clearly, the faithful have not simply dismissed the God-hypothesis in the face of apparent evil.

Another example is that of Christendom’s resistance to the heliocentric theory of planetary motion. Copernicus’s doctrine that the planets revolve around the sun, not the earth, was resisted by not only the Church of his time, but the scientific community of his time as well. To be fair, the instruments of the period were not able to demonstrate the superiority of the Copernican over the Ptolemaic calculations (though the Copernican did, in fact, turn out to be more accurate, especially after Kepler added elliptical orbits), but it was still the case that Copernicus had the stronger case. So why didn’t the scientists of his time just dump the Ptolemaic method and move on smartly to the Copernican?

In more recent times, we see people clinging desperately to political and economic theories in the face of devastating contrary evidence. Communism as a form of social organization has proven to be repressive and brutal beyond imagination, witness Soviet Russia and Communist China. Democratic Socialism as an economic doctrine has proven to be an utter failure, witness Western Europe. Notwithstanding, large numbers of people, many of them in leadership positions hold on to these doctrines, either secretly or openly. How can they continue to do this?

I was led to these reflections after reading a light weight column by one Susan Estrich, a fairly well known left-of-center political wonk, entitled “Mr. President, It’s Time to Go To Israel.” What were her reasons? They actually boiled down to single one: it’s time to reassure Israel, it’s supporters from both parties in the U.S., and international friends of Israel that he and his administration do support the Jewish State. She wrote as if the Obama administration’s position on Israel was a well-guarded secret, but that a quick trip to Israel would reveal the truth, namely that Obama, like his predecessors, was actually completely committed to the healthy survival of the U.S’s only democratic friend in the Middle East.

As I read this, I was tempted towards sarcasm: “What is it, precisely, Ms Estrich, that you don’t understand about getting pissed on?”

It seemed to me in the moment that only congenital stupidity, a brain injury, or outright lying could bring her to write as if there was any doubt at all about this inadequate man’s attitude towards Israel. Obama is not a subtle man, as much as his defenders would like to cloak him in supernatural intellectual powers. He is not subtle, he is not diplomatic, he is of very limited intelligence. On the other hand, he is arrogant, pompous, self-important, and frequently reveals his mind honestly without much thinking at all. In other words, Ms. Estrich seems to be holding an unrealistic view of Obama in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. She is not stupid, so how can she do this?

This is not mere Obama-bashing. Obama has shown us who he is. We have evidence. During the flap with the police in Boston, he said the police “acted stupidly.” Who acted stupidly, Mr. Obama, eh? Was it “intelligent” for the president of the United States to intervene personally in a domestic dispute when the facts were not known? And was it diplomatic for Obama to publicly show contempt and disdain for Netanyahu on his visit to the U.S.? Was there a “point” to this behavior or was it just the action of a primitive Chicago thug with the deranged words of a Pastor Jeremiah Wright ringing in his large ears? When he rejected the British and sucked up to the French, what was he doing? Did he know, or was he just acting out his stupid rage at the British “Colonialists” his father hated? Flash to Mr. Obama, Britain hasn’t had colonies in a very long time! Flash to Mr. Obama, Churchill has been dead since 1965 – he won’t know that you’re returning his bust to England!

No, whether intentionally or not, Obama has left little doubt about where he stands on most issues and only willful self-deception or willful lying can lead to the pretense that we don’t really know what is really going on in his “remarkable” inscrutable mind.

That mind is plenty scrutable, there’s no doubt about that. The only thing that sometimes muddies the already murky waters welling around it is that he sometimes realizes belatedly that he has caused a problem with his big mouth and comes out on the talk shows (a very attractive platform for a president of the United States) and issues either bald denials of what he actually did say or delivers high-sounding bafflegab to a pre-selected audience.

The fact that people, and large numbers of them, are capable of holding on their hypotheses, say for example the almost divine wisdom of the anointed Obama-the-great, in the face of crushing contrary evidence is a serious political problem.

What makes the problem extremely difficult to resolve is that there can be very rational reasons for not rejecting a theory or hypothesis in response to contrary evidence.

Sometimes, people handle contrary evidence by adding a supplementary or ad hoc hypothesis whose function it is to “explain” the presence of the contrary evidence without having to reject the main hypothesis.

For example, a researcher funded by a large manufacturer of antibiotics might have hypothesized that a certain new illness was caused by bacilli. Having taken a swab from an infected person, he might have placed it in a dish of agar-agar, a common bacterial nutrient. Having waited a suitable amount of time for the bacilli to multiply, he might have made a slide and examined it under a microscope. Suppose, now, that he saw no bacilli. Should he reject his initial hypothesis? Not necessarily, since he could also hypothesize that the specific bacilli he was speculating about simply do not thrive in agar-agar. This is an ad hoc hypothesis because it is introduced only after the failure of the main hypothesis. The problem is that it might actually be true nonetheless.

The researcher has to decide whether the additional cost in time and money that taking the ad hoc hypothesis seriously is worth it. Since the researcher is funded by a company that manufactures antibiotics, he might well decide that further research is definitely worth it – to him, even if not to them.

My point is that there are non-scientific or non-rational considerations that often determine the direction we take when faced with contrary evidence. In the example I gave above, the additional overhead in costs and time might well turn out to be negligible and so the decision to exclude the ad hoc hypothesis might not be a serious problem.

But when scientists have to decide whether it is the earth or the sun that lies at the center of the universe (as they knew it), then there is much more at stake. We must remember that there was not yet a strict dividing line then between theological “knowledge” and scientific knowledge  and that the centrality of man had been an axiom of Christian theology. Going with Copernicus was not just a matter of changing how we calculate where the planets are going to show up in the future,  it was a matter of losing an entire world-view. Once scripture was understood as false in one instance, it ceased to be infallible as the word of God. So, there was a lot more at stake than a single theory or hypothesis. The overhead of going with Copernicus was huge, and deciding against that was not stupid – it was pragmatic, the cost was too high when compared to the benefits.

I think something quite similar happens when progressives do not respond to contrary evidence in the way that conservatives expect them to.

Giving up the idea that Obama is the savior, a brilliant, subtle, diplomatic half-black man who has come out of nowhere to save us, simply carries for progressives too large an emotional cost to give it up. This romantic claptrap is not an isolated brick in the arch of their mental picture of the world, it is the keystone, and if the keystone is removed, then the arch collapses.

Accepting the notion that Obama is genuinely hostile to the state of Israel would involve Jewish progressives in having to re-think their entire framework, it might even force them to rethink their own understanding of how the American and International Left have been historically and currently anti-Semitic and full of hate for Israel.

This is a shock to their weltanschauung that they simply cannot afford. The overhead is simply too high.